Sorry, but I did not learn much from the link because opinions there seem divided about 50:50 as to whether data increases the weight of the HDD or not.

One guy said he left his laptop downloading stuff, and returned to find just a hole in the floor. But others spout mystic nonsense about magnetic particles changing orientation - can you belive that? ... who knows?

Unsolved mysteries of the Universe, No 13 :-
How many remakes of Anna Karenina does the World need?

nelz wrote:Quantum hard drives presumably weigh more as they are in more than one place at the same time...

No, they weigh less as they're on more place then one and the weight of the data they hold is distributed evenly between those places. Otherwise their data weighs in at one place and is weightless elsewhere. That's impossible!

nelz wrote:Quantum hard drives presumably weigh more as they are in more than one place at the same time...

No, they weigh less as they're on more place then one and the weight of the data they hold is distributed evenly between those places. Otherwise their data weighs in at one place and is weightless elsewhere. That's impossible!

Come to think of it, more storage makes it lighter! Remember the days of 128kB RAM, harddrives of 512MB and 10" VGA CRT monitors for your quite unwieldy 486 box? Compare to the latest tablets with 128GB of storage and 512MB of RAM, the tablet is a featherweight! So, more data makes a device lighter

nelz wrote:Quantum hard drives presumably weigh more as they are in more than one place at the same time...

No, they weigh less as they're on more place then one and the weight of the data they hold is distributed evenly between those places. Otherwise their data weighs in at one place and is weightless elsewhere. That's impossible!

Not that either. A quantum drive exists in a superposition of different possible weights, and it does not have a real weight until you collapse it (I have used a lump hammer for this). Even then its weight will be arbitrary within a range of probable values.

And if you entangle two quantum drives together (easy once the cables are attached), then writing data to one also writes the data to the other, a great software-free backup regime.

The only downside is you have to buy two HDs, then smash one flat before you can read your data back from the other.

"Klinger, do you know how many zoots were killed to make that one suit?" — BJ Hunnicutt, 4077 M*A*S*H